KEEPING UP WITH THE NINE-TAILED FOX: A couple years back, I noted the short-lived appearance of some Tokyopop manga titles (Rave Master, f'rinstance) in the bookshelves of a Central Illinois Wal-Mart, but the experiment apparently didn't take since the store never replenished its manga titles after the first batch was sold. This month, though, at the Safford, AZ, Super Wally World, I caught a display for the current Viz Naruto blitz, with all six of the recent paperbacks (Volumes 16-21) available for an economical $5.97 apiece. As a result, I've been happily catching up on Masashi Kishimoto's popular ninja training series over the past two weeks and am just at the point (Vol. 20) where our hero and his fellow student Sasuke are about to face off. Remember reading on Tom Spurgeon's blog that this particular run of the series is one of the least favored by many of its fans, but so far I haven't detected any noticeable lag in the storyline. I'm still somewhat nervous about the prospect of an older, more mature Naruto in Volume 28, however. Do we really wanna see that?

Here's hoping that our local Mart follows through with the series' November & December releases . . .

If this blog does not discuss a specific political issue or event, it is not because this writer finds said event politically inconvenient to acknowledge - it's simply because he's scatterbrained and irresponsible.